


The landscape after cruelty

by zempasuchil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, M/M, Season/Series 01, Sibling Incest, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After getting coordinates from Dad, Sam and Dean head north to Oregon to find a house that's making people sick for no apparent reason. Dean's antsy because of his unfinished business in that town with a violent spirit from four years ago, a machete-wielding murderer that simply vanished. But what he doesn't expect is the return of his feelings of obsession from four years ago - not over the case, but over Sam, who was away at college that summer. Dean tries not to get too worked up over all of it, but Sam's always been too hard to ignore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The landscape after cruelty

**Author's Note:**

> Title and cut lines from _Snow and Dirty Rain_ by Richard Siken.
> 
> [Master post](http://samdean-otp.livejournal.com/170725.html) @ lj comm samdean_otp  
> [Art post](http://apieceofcake.livejournal.com/415616.html#cutid1) @ apieceofcake's lj

Dean will never fail to tell Sam that Starbucks is always a waste of money on burnt coffee, full of geeks and yuppies and kids, and completely not worth it. He had to admit, though; this time, Sam had actually found the perfect excuse to go sit there all day. Their motel air conditioner, already barely sufficient, had kicked out that June morning in Arizona and they'd woken up bathed in tequila sweat after maybe four hours of drunken sleep. They'd gotten back late last night after finishing their hunt, a Llorona stealing children from rich people's vacation homes up in the mountains north of Phoenix. They'd saved a nine-year-old girl and carried her back home to her mom's arms. The hunts where you save kids are the best hunts, no question. After such a success, usually Dean would insist on staying somewhere a few days to rest up and celebrate, but with the air conditioning out, and the motel about to raise prices because of a motorcycle convention coming through, they needed a new case. For that, they needed research.

The county library isn't open on Sundays, they find out, and besides, the barista says, their internet is the worst. Sam smiles at her and works his stupid floppy bangs routine, and she smiles back in that professionally flirtatious manner of baristas everywhere. Dean would be all over this, normally, but he's more hung over than Sam.

"Hey," Dean says after they've sat down with coffee barely five minutes. "You think these kids are up to no good?" He snaps his newspaper up to show a picture of some graffiti over walls, prevalent enough to catch the town's concern.

"What, that? Dean, that's graffiti, not satanist symbols."

"Could be something. Oh, come _on_ , Sam, this is boring! We need a hunt."

"Then find a real case. In the meantime, I'm not gonna drive around aimlessly in the summer without AC. I want to hole up somewhere cool, and this motel is not cutting it."

Dean sighs and can barely bring himself to return to the newspaper. He gets up to put more sugar in his coffee, and goes over to chat up the barista, ask if there's anything they should do while in town. He complains about his kid brother who just needs the internet, when really, they're traveling to get away from stuff like that. Dean cocks his head and looks into the distance, the practiced look of a rebel spirit, and tells her about how they need to stop being tied down by all this (he'll wave his hand to encompass coffee and laptops and café walls). That's why they decided to roadtrip, he and Sam, to get in touch with the real America. She smiles at him, all interested, either because she's done enough road-tripping herself and wants to compare notes, or because she hasn't and she thinks Dean is so interesting and _experienced._

Dean can tell Sam is giving him the stinkeye as the barista asks him what New England is like, but hell, at least Dean isn't bugging him, so Sam can just calm down.

Sam messes around on his computer some more, fidgets, picks up his cell and scrolls through his contacts. Dean turns away, says, "Sunburn makes him bitchy," and the barista laughs.

In a few minutes Dean's about to get her number when Sam calls over, "Hey Dean. Dean, c'mere."

Dean tries to ignore him, but Sam says "I've got coordinates."

Well, there's something. He shrugs at the barista like _you know, family, gotta deal with them_ , but heads over there quick. "From Dad?"

"Yeah." Sam's already typed it into the search engine. "Klamath Falls, Oregon."

Dean freezes. He knows that name. "No. Wait, I mean, not no, but. Where? Klamath?"

"Yeah, southern Oregon. What?" Sam asks, eyes narrowing, and the barista's forgotten. "What's with you?"

"I've been there before."

"I don't remember it. When?"

"Four years ago."

Sam makes a face, calculating. "With Dad?" Dean shakes his head. "By yourself?"

Dean shrugs and he can't quite look at Sam. "It was shitty. Had to leave a case on a dead end. But I've been keeping my eye on that place, we would've known if it… All right, let's go pack up, put this town in our rearview. California." He's already happier, and he puts it on extra for Sam, to cover up the brick in his stomach over Klamath Falls and the case he's been aching a little over ever since.

Sam is smiling small, all right, and if it's bittersweet well that's more sweet than Dean hoped to see so soon. Dean knows California makes him happy, mostly. They won't go by Stanford, no, they'll skirt the hell out of it; they'll slide up the coast for a while then move over the mountains to I-5. There's no ocean like the freezing Pacific after you've been roasting in the desert.

"Flip you to see who gets to drive around LA," Dean says to Sam, and Sam is hardly even put out by that thought.

"Rock paper scissors."

"You're on."

-

Late afternoon is a shitty time to set off driving in the desert when you're in the Impala. They take advantage of the Starbucks till late enough, trying to find anything Dad might be pointing them towards, a haunting, livestock mutilations, unusual deaths. Unfortunately nothing is unusual enough to break into national news, so they're without a real lead till they get to Klamath and can check the town paper, the local library, the archives.

Dean's used to having to dig, and he knows Sam is too, but Sam gets tense when he knows their dad is setting them on a trail without anything to actually follow. When he starts glaring at the computer screen, rubbing his eyes, pinching his nose, Dean gets him more of his iced coffee without being asked.

Sam does a double take when Dean sets it down, says, "Thanks."

Dean shrugs. "We should probably get going soon. You find anything new?"

"No," Sam says, snorts, and shuts his computer.

Trying to nap in an un-airconditioned motel room at this time of day isn't worth it, so they set off once the sun's really setting and the desert begins to cool. The night is good for the Impala. She's got it rough; she just runs too hot and ready to stay cool in the midday desert heat. Night driving is best, seeing as how they've no AC in the car. Seriously, though, Dean's ready to sleep in AC for a week after that hunt. The Northwest is going to feel damn good. In the meantime he's got the windows open with the cooler, higher-altitude air blowing in, and Sam can even sleep through it, he's so tired. Dean doesn't have music on, so it's only his brain on a muted chatter, hashing over the details, what they're looking for, anything suspicious. A haunting, livestock mutilations, unusual deaths. Dean's had an eye on those unusual deaths, though. There's been nothing showing up in national news, not like last time. Leaving jobs unfinished, cases unsolved, it's a big deal and if Dad thinks he'd walk off without – well. The coordinates sting like a reprimand.

The Impala's just coming out of the desert when the sun starts rising, and the hills in front of him are suddenly full of orange-lit circling windmills, hundreds and hundreds. Sam is asleep, he's missing this, he always likes the windmills, but Dean's not going to wake him up. He'll get to see more again soon enough, always will. There's construction and strange ten-foot-high brambles by the side of the highway, but Dean barely notices, the sun has whitewashed everything at this hour and it's all he can do to see through his sunglasses and distinguish his lane in the road. It's by the seat of his pants driving, and he loves it, loves not thinking about the consequences of the grade of the curve, just hugging it, feeling it glide perfect underneath him.

He stops some hours afterward, heading up on I-5 soon as he can to skirt LA, but not for long, heading west on the first state route he can. He's been driving for around nine hours when Sam wakes up and whines him off the road into a gas station, where Sam gets snacks and his turn to drive. Dean only complains a little but his eyelids are drooping enough that Sam can probably see he doesn't mean it. His eyes are tired and his head's hurting and he's got plenty of sleep to catch up on.

-

Sam shakes his shoulder and Dean jerks awake. He'd been sleeping restlessly, anxiously, and he's sure he'd been dreaming something. Something about a hunt, maybe.

"Klamath Falls, Dean," Sam says, and they're still moving, rolling to a stop at the end of the exit ramp.

"Turn right," Dean says. "Gotta stop at Rosa's."

"Who's she?"

"Rosa's Diner. Best cherry pie in the state, dude. I'm starving." Dean hasn't had it in a while. He remembers the way, though, and though he wouldn't say he's got the place mapped in his mind he can feel it, unique and familiar, even after the hundreds of small towns he's seen since. He scrubs grit from his eyes and stretches his cramped neck.

Sam groans as they pull in. "Please tell me they have real food."

"Eh, you just want a salad, you wouldn't know real food if it bit you in the ass." Dean swings the door open, gets out, waits as Sam takes a minute to squint at his hair in the rearview. He tries, hilariously, to flatten it as much as he can with his hand, scrubs at his eyes again, and then gets out. Dean waits for him at the door, and Sam gives him a look then, like, _what_ , and Dean smirks because his hair still looks ridiculous but it's a good day, they're in good moods, they're here at a diner and they're going to have pie and rest their boots next to each other on the other side of the booth. He opens the door and doesn't hold it or anything, just waits for Sam to catch it and follow. Sam does, boots heavy and clunking behind him.

Of course they have food that isn't pie. Sam gets two pretty good BLTs, Dean an omelet and coffee to wake himself up. Dean flexes his hands and wraps them around his hot mug while Sam shuffles around his own little notebook and a pen, Dad's journal, and what few notes he'd taken about Klamath's potential supernatural troubles. They order their pie and Dean sets aside some cash for the tip, a nice one, and says, "All right, what's itching you."

"Tell me what you were hunting here before."

"It was different stuff happening," Dean hedges, but Sam interrupts, going "Yeah sure, but maybe it's not, maybe it'll help, Dean."

"Fine, I know, just chill, Sam." And he starts in.

-  


> Dean is restless as soon as he pulls into town. _Then get this one done and move out_ , he thinks, hearing it in Dad's voice. Without hardly thinking, Dean is automatically cataloguing all the places he could go from there in a day or so – Spokane, Moses Lake, the Pacific, Vegas, San Francisco. Right.
> 
> He chews his lip and steps out of the Impala onto the neat curb, in the empty cul-de-sac of a skeletal development. _Get this one done. Move on._
> 
> But, as it turns out, it's not so easy as all that.
> 
> "You say you heard noises that night?" he asks the to-be-landlady, living in the Pine Ridge community's model home. She looks at him from under her bandanna, tired and a little sweaty from gardening, probably about to wash up until he dropped by. He tries for a remotely winning smile.
> 
> "Yeah," she says, not too hostile, leaning against the doorframe. "And nights before that, and since. Sounds like construction, maybe. Metal sounds. I don't think they're doing work, though, since it's dark out."
> 
> "Do they work at night here? The foreman told me the man who died was there off-hours."
> 
> "Sure, they work some nights, but never without those floodlights. I don't think there were lights that last Tuesday, but we've been hearing that scraping noise anyway."
> 
> Dean nods and makes a fake note in his tiny journalist's notebook. He's dressed in a non-flannel button-down and carrying a hardhat, to indicate that he has the experience to understand the problem as well as the authority to do something about it. "These sounds," he says, "do they sound like machinery running?"
> 
> "No," she says. "There's no engine noise."
> 
> A voice calls down the stairs, "Mom, tell him about the bells!" A boy pokes his head out over the stair railing, where it meets the ceiling.
> 
> "Bells?" Dean asks.
> 
> The landlady looks less certain. "My son says he hears bells too. I've never heard them," and her uneasiness seemed to indicate that she'd tried and failed consistently.
> 
> "Can I ask him what it sounded like?" Dean asks.
> 
> "Sure. Ethan, come here. What did you hear?"
> 
> "Uh, like bells. Jingle bells, kinda. I thought it was an ice cream truck but then it wasn't, and they weren't playing a song."
> 
> "When did you hear them?" Dean's got his pen on the paper but he's not writing, he's just listening.
> 
> "After dinner. When it starts getting dark. I don't know what days."
> 
> "That's all right. That's great, Ethan. Thanks." To Ethan's mom, he says, "I'll be around to check it out tonight. Don't worry if you see my car - that's it," and he points to the Impala parked by the curb. "You be careful at night."
> 
> -
> 
> He stakes the place out that night, around the corner from the landlady's house, to see if he can hear what she and her son heard. Right around ten, he hears the bells start in. The kid's right, it could be a distant ice cream truck, except for the fact that this neighborhood is really only half a housing development, surrounded by forest preserve on all sides, tall pine trees closing it in from the world.
> 
> Half the street already has streetlights installed, but beyond it is the darkest dark, the kind that only exists in small towns near the woods. Dean barely has the glow of a quarter-moon from behind cloud cover, but he can see by it, not close enough to any city to get that orange glow.
> 
> It's been raining this week. The pits are covered up but still holding water down at the bottom, in the houses' foundations, and every construction surface is muddy. Nobody would want to be around here - only spirits and monsters, which is what Dean is counting on. The construction crew hasn't run any equipment today, from what Dean has seen, watching the gates. No cars have gone in or out besides the few that belong in their driveways. The only large equipment left on site is a tractor. Dean walks by it, watching the shadows all around, but they're still. Everything is still.
> 
> Dean is sitting in his car, dreaming about some hunt. It's something his brain's made up, Dean and Dad and Sam and they're hunting vampires. The vampires have knives, they have machetes, pulling tiny ones out of their mouths. Dean turns his back but he can see Sam's face, Sam is staring, wide-eyed and slack-jawed and hollow-cheeked with panic. He's holding on to Dean's arm and Dean's trying to shove him off, _let go, get outta here, run, Sammy_ , because Dean can't run, he can't move, he can only stand there and look at Sam's face. Sam won't move either, though, even though he can see, and Dean hears the metallic ringing of the nest coming after them, their arms full of machetes. He can't move, and Sam won't let go or move and his eyes are so big, but everything is coming up right behind Dean, and he hears the sound of it, _shing, shing, shing_. The edge of the machete grinds on the bones in his neck and in that instant he's awake, the sun just starting to rise. He hears it, that exact eerie scrape of metal in the distance, past this row of houses, in among the trees. The sound of machetes.
> 
> Sawed-off with salt rounds in one hand, silver knife in his belt, he jumps out of the car, staggering on sleep-weak legs, but already the sound (are those bells again?) is more distant. Dean runs in the direction he thinks it went, but by the time he reaches the hillside, he's too late. It's the same thing they found last week one development over: a dead body. No sign of whatever it was that got him, but there's a man wearing the bloody tatters of construction wear, the thick canvas torn like a cotton t-shirt, newly dead and half buried in a slide of mud. His body's been shredded as badly as his clothes, mauled awfully, and they'll want to call it a cougar attack right off the bat, but Dean won't stick around long enough to tell them those cuts weren't made by an animal, but by metal. Dean would bet money on it.
> 
> He gets what information he needs from the body - finds a wallet, roots through to find ID. There are great chunks of flesh cut off around the torso, the legs. The body's been practically butchered in areas, not just wild cuts but neat ones too, and Dean has no idea where whole pieces of this guy have gone. He looks around quick but doesn't find anything that looks remotely like a lead, then when he hears the first sign of life in the neighborhood, a car going by, he books it. Dean doesn't need to be found like this, not when there's no one around to get him out of a trouble with the cops.
> 
> The library's got nothing, though, and the next night's got nothing new since the police found the body and the area is taped off with people investigating. They won't talk to him, no way, and if they ask the landlady they might be looking for him as a suspect. All Dean can manage then is a quick drive-by look, and then, armed as much as he can, sneak to the edge of the woods. But still, nothing happens for a week, then two. Dean spends slow, interminable days at the library looking up town history, trying to find serial killers, butchers who went postal, local legends – hell, he doesn't know what. The library still has nothing good even after a couple more visits, and damn but Dean hates that, not just research
> 
> ("Yeah, you do hate research," Sam says at this part, and Dean shoots back, "Shut up, geekboy, that's not my point")
> 
> but this suspense, the slowest suspense ever of waiting and looking for something to fight, when he's got no leads or hunches and probably someone's going to die before he gets any. Both his background on the dead guy and what he can get from the police turns up nothing interesting - he worked construction but he wasn't union, just started on the development, he was sending money to family in Mexico, he didn't have any family here and was staying at a motel part-time. When he breaks into the room, even that doesn't have anything useful to Dean – no letters, no datebooks, just clothes, some tools, an old pizza box, quarter bottle of whiskey. No connections in the area, nothing else weird and local, just the two deaths, same town, different places, different employers, different homes. The landlady won't answer her door but he sees her and her kid as he drives by.
> 
> And then one night when Dean is driving through the neighborhood again, he gets a call from Dad, asking for his help on a case out in Missouri. So he books it, six parts regret, half a dozen relief that he gets to leave this dead end.

-

Sam's giving him this look like he wants to tell Dean _Don't beat yourself up about it_ , and Dean can't stand it when he's like that, and he hates when Sam doesn't get how this isn't about Dean, that his failures mean something, that their job is important, the most important, so he keeps talking.

"He was so cut up I couldn't tell just how he died. Bled out, probably, but who knows how long it took."

"How do you even know it was a ghost? Not just some sneaky serial killer?"

"Violent machete deaths with no suspects? This guy was butchered in what the police figured was an instant, Sam." Sam shudders a little at that. "Might as well be our kind of thing. I dunno, man. It stopped and I couldn't dig up any information, the site was closed up by police twenty-four seven even after the body was moved, and Dad called me away when he needed my help."

"All right, all right, I'm not blaming you or anything."

"A man doesn't just walk away from his job."

Sam sighs and Dean watches the line of his throat swallow. "Anything else? We got machetes, bells, bleeding out, killed in the woods..."

"The body wasn't just bled out. Like I said, it was butchered. Not like cuts of meat, though - something had stripped most of the fat from the body, cut it away or drained it somehow."

"You saw that? Oh, that's disgusting."

"You better believe it," Dean says, taking a gulp of now-lukewarm coffee. Sam's suddenly looking at the gelatinous strawberry rhubarb pie in front of him with his nose crinkled up, and Dean thinks it's funny that after all they've seen, Sam can still get turned off food just by talking about gore he hasn't seen. But Dean has seen it, can still picture it, so he can't quite laugh about that now. "Anyway," Dean says into his mug, "that's not what's happening this time. I kept my eye on the place for a while, months, a year, and nobody got murdered, no more deaths."

"Hope not," says Sam, and Dean bristles at his doubt.

"Look, Dad turned us onto this, same as any other job. Can't walk into this thinking we know what to look for, 'cause we're gonna miss something important that way."

"Yeah but Dean –"

"We haven't even looked at the local paper, okay? Calm down. Maybe it's not even deaths, maybe it's changelings or something Dad needs us to find out."

Sam's mouth curls and he snorts. "Thought you wanted a real case."

"I wanted something to get us going. At least we've got a break from the heat." Dean can see that Sam's swayed by that thought: cool beaches, warm sun, mountain air, shade beneath the trees.

"Maybe you'll get some closure on that old job," Sam says.

"Closure?" Dean scoffs, and stabs at the pie. "No thanks, Doctor Laura, not buying any. We've got our own case now." Ours. Dean's used to it but in a way he's still getting used to it, you know? _Us_ being him and Sam, not him and Dad, not him and Dad and Sam. Not him by himself, last time he sat in this diner. Christ, the fuck is this, it's been years since then and a year on the road with Sam since that, and he needs to get ahold of himself.

"Sure," Sam says, but it's not in the irritating tone Dean is expecting, and Sam is maybe not going to be as big an ass about this as Dean anticipated. As Dean would've been if Sam had wanted to go somewhere on such a small lead.

"Hey, we can go to the beach, yeah? When this is over, Cannon Beach. Find us some mermaids."

Sam snorts, amused, and Dean likes that, so he shapes some sexy mermaid-like curves in the air, and Sam groans. "Dean, you do not wanna fuck that."

"Don't tell me who I do and don't want to fuck, Sam."

"I seriously doubt they're like Ariel. They probably want to drown you. That's what mermaids do, in the lore. They drown sailors."

"Can't you let a man dream?"

"Dude, Ariel's like, fourteen!" Sam looks at him, mock-disgusted, mock-exasperated, with a little bit of something warm in the crinkles of his eyes, the corners of his mouth. Dean feels like he can't stop looking, but like he can't look any longer. Comes from being in the car too long, alone too long with someone else, he thinks, but that's not it, that's irritation, this is just… narrow focus. Highway hypnosis. He blinks and breaks Sam's gaze but feels it itching, scratches his forehead, his scalp.

"You wanna finish this pie or are we going?"

Sam lets his fork clatter into the dish, accidentally-on-purpose kicks Dean's feet getting out of the booth, and Dean kicks back then lets the corners of his lips smile small and secret down at his plate, trying not to let the memories of that summer creep back into his system, thinking instead, _Sam Sam Sam, annoying little brother Sammy,_ saying, "Bitch" to a Sam who's at the counter paying the bill, out of earshot.

-

There are actually a lot of things Dean doesn't tell Sam. Neither of them talks much about the time Sam was at Stanford, unless bits from cases come up, but that's only on a need-to-know basis for jobs. Dean doesn't actually like holding his superior knowledge of hunting over Sam after Sam was gone for years and came back kinda rusty, because Sam should be good at this, he used to be good at this even when he hated it. He's still good, just not as good, not just yet. Sam should know everything Dean knows because they should've been together for everything. But that's not the way it went.

The way it went goes like this:

Dean got this other case, black dog in Washington, right from Dad, who got it from Caleb, and Dad told him _I've got some demonic-looking omens popping up in Colorado, you think you can handle this one?_

Of course, Dean said, and they split ways, Dad headed south and Dean headed west. He remembers resenting it, thinking darkly for a second that Dad did this on purpose, always finding leads and bad omens that split them up, but of course that's full of crap. Hunting is hunting, it's a dangerous job and they've got to do it. Dad had his priorities and none of them could do anything about what Sam wanted, where Sam wanted to go, when he wanted to leave. It didn't take long for Dean to realize it was him obsessing over Sam leaving and not Dad. He was the one who'd still skips the songs Sam would always ask to skip, who thought of everywhere they went as a point oriented around Sam at Stanford.

Dad wouldn't talk about Sam, which, Dean realized, meant that he was obsessing over this. The absence of Sam charged the air when anything Sam-related came up, with Dean jerking to a halt, and Dad steamrolling right through like there was nothing going on, nothing horribly wrong with just two of them in the Impala. They got out of sync. Dean felt chafed, irritated, wrong.

Splitting up with Dad was honestly a bit of a relief for him at first, but then the silence started to creep in. The Impala felt too light on her wheels; she moved desperately fast, and Dean was giddy, breathing shallow, forgetting to stop for meals while he just drove. He played the cassette tapes more than he and Dad, he and Dad and Sam, would have. They carried him through the hours quicker. He'd take the long routes, the scenic ones, and wrap up cases as fast as he could.

As fast as he would move, the progress he made could be mapped in tiny increments of distance from Palo Alto. Dean crept towards and away from California in a game of chicken with himself, an anxious and cowardly tide. He would get close to Stanford, then back when he started thinking of what would happen if he actually saw Sam. What would they have to say to each other? Would Sam ask him _What are you doing here?_ – and what could Dean say to that? _Dad couldn't make it - Dad wanted to make it - Dad doesn't know I'm here – Dad's not here with me but he loves you - I love you so I'm here_. Hey, Sammy. Easy, tiger.

 

Starting in April, Dean crept down the coast from the northern border of the US, following a trail of mountain lion sightings that were really some Assyrian demon, getting that one before he reached the Columbia river, picking up on a poltergeist in Aberdeen and heading that way, then just sliding down the coastline, sleeping in rest stops, parking and sleeping on the beach, in the car because the Northwest summer is still cold and windy. Looking up at the stars through the windshield and not having anyone to share them with, it went from profound to just plain fucking miserable, but Dean didn't admit it to himself for a long time, because if a man cries on an empty beach it doesn't make a fucking sound and there's no goddamn point to it and it didn't happen.

Sam and Dean hadn't talked for a few months. Once, a few weeks after Sam had left, Dean had called drunk and Sam had noticed right away, said _You're drunk._ Sam was drunk too so it was okay. Dean let Sam tell him about classes and what Palo Alto was like, what living in one place for so long was like, how he missed driving, how living with Sam's roommate was compared to living with Dean, and Dean wouldn't remember half of it, just the sound of Sam's voice, mostly. And then Sam fell asleep on him and Dean found himself saying to the sound of Sam's breathing, _Things are different without you. Dad and I are taking more separate cases now, Dad's got his big truck from Bobby Singer's junkyard running. Your goddamn legos are still rattling in the air vents and it makes me sick to my stomach sometimes, Sammy, you don't know what you did or how I'm still going through it, why'd you do this, you don't have any clue what it's like here, what it's always been like, and you're never gonna know._

The wet breaths, long pauses between exhale and inhale.

 _'Night, Sam._

Says it then like Sam can hear him. Because Sam's never going to know the rest of it.

Dean hangs up and then goes to throw up in the beach grass before passing out in the back of the Impala.

Sam needled under his skin like that, and kept needling, a little painful but unrefusable. It was the effect Sam always had on him. That, the feeling, Sam, they were all something Dean kept by holding at a distance rather than holding too close, like he would've done, used to do, was afraid of doing.

That's the way it was in Oregon, then, that awful feeling that surrounded him on all sides. It wasn't anxiety, because there was no real suspense, having given up on the other shoe dropping, Sam showing up out of nowhere, Sam calling to say he's coming home. The worst was how Dean stayed there so long. He soaked his misery in the grey ocean and grey clouds, bright sun and bright water, the landscape filling and obscuring his vision. He was only a day's drive from Sam but it was a long, long day, so he lingered, not thinking about going, thinking better of it. He basically lived in this trailer in Lincoln City for two weeks just because, because he'd never been there with Sam and so he didn't have to think about Sam all the time. Which was bullshit. Sam was all over his brain then, Dean was just telling himself Sam wasn't there. Sam was seeping up the cracks, Dean's memories of him associating themselves with new things, and now Lincoln City was a landscape painted with Dean's own loneliness and a million disjointed and dislocated memories of Sam.

Apparently he can't escape this trick his brain plays on him in Klamath Falls. The place has changed enough that Dean is disoriented by it. He'd almost expected to be drawn back into everything he'd been wrapped up in then, in a dizzying rush, but no, not quite. The past lurks under everything and he tries to pin it down, so he can dissuade himself of this, identify it and forget it. It won't work. Sam is here with him, not in the landscape even when Dean is expecting him to be. He's here, next to him, and Dean is hyperaware of it. That's the difference, that Sam is here in shotgun, Sam gets coffee in the morning, Sam is the one who asks about old newspapers in the library while Dean scouts out a good place to sit.

It makes Sam into a pretty big difference.

-

The next morning, Dean comes in with coffees and a bunch of newspapers and opens the blinds, hearing Sam grunt at the light. "Dude, it's seven a.m., you know beauty sleep doesn't work on you."

"Huh? Gimme a break, Dean."

"While you were sleeping, I figured I'd check out the local paper, right?"

Sam sits up on the edge of his bed, stretches. "What, you want a pat on the head?"

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. I got you coffee, be grateful."

"Thanks." Sam gets up, grabs his cup, stands there in his boxers and t-shirt staring out the window just inhaling the steam. "Where'd you get the papers?"

"Motel lobby. This is almost all of the last week's."

Sam grunts assent and disappears into the bathroom. "We're going to the library after this. That's not enough."

Dean groans loud so Sam can hear. "Hate libraries."

"Quit your whining." He can hear the laugh in Sam's voice.

\--

Of course Sam's right, he does hate research. Really what he hates is libraries, though, and this one is up there – everything is soul-killing beige and patchily lit, with buzzing computer monitors. He would rather do something like reconnaissance than research; so sue him, he's a fan of the great outdoors.

"Go take a run or something if you're so restless," Sam says. Dean starts up from the dregs of his coffee, but Sam's still bent over the accordion folder, his back to Dean, who's leaning against the wall of the archive corner. Kid's got eyes in the back of his head or something. "You're jittery, it's distracting."

Usually Dean would claim the right to sleep in on research days, till Sam brought him coffee and grabbed his foot in bed, _Come on, got a job to do._ Usually Dean would take Sam up on that offer like anything. Not this morning, apparently. "Nah, rather stay here and bug the hell outta you."

"That's sweet. No, really, Dean. I've got this."

"Shut up, I'm the expert here."

"Fine, then." Sam turns and hands him nearly a foot of newspaper. "You take these, I'll read the microfiche."

"Microfiche," Dean mutters. "Maybe I'll take you up on that run."

"Nope, too late. You volunteered."

"Screw you." Sam shakes his head at this, smiles a little at Dean. Dean fake-scowls back.

"If you're gonna make me dig and shoot things, I'm gonna make you research, jerk."

"Fine, bitch." The girl shelving near the microfiche tables gives them a nasty look, and Dean fake-smiles at her before thunking his stack of papers down in front of him. "So. No weird deaths, I'll promise you that."

"Better give the obituaries a scan anyway, might be some sort of unrelated pattern. Maybe a poltergeist, succubus, changeling."

"Check missing people too."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill." Sam shakes his head again, jostling something loose, looks at Dean. "I'm gonna try to look into what happened in '02 too. What if the guys who died are restless spirits?"

Dean rubs his face. "Come on, that's my case."

"Then get on it. See if you find anything."

Dean's still rubbing his eyes. This sucks. "Sure. I just, man, this sucks."

"It's just a case, Dean. Get a feel for things."

Dean grunts and grabs a newspaper off the pile.

An hour later and Dean's ready to take a walk when Sam swivels around. "So I think I've got something." He moves to sit across from Dean and leans in. "This fourteen-year-old kid died last year. Not violent, not a crime, no mention of a long cancer battle so it looks like just illness. And only a few months before, his grandma died, looks like old age."

"So?"

"Fourteen-year-old kids don't drop dead out of nowhere, Dean. There might be a curse on the family. I looked up the family, they're living in northern California now. Maybe they were running from something."

"Huh. Kids." Dean shuffles his pile of newspapers. "There was a kid who died almost a month ago, seven years old, but just illness. Two sick kids and an old woman, and a family that moved away from the town their kid died in? That doesn't make a case."

"Well, what else have you got? We know there's _something_ here, Dean. Dad wouldn't have sent us if there wasn't."

Dean can't argue with that. They find a couple old phone books and what do you know, the families lived at the same address. They call the number listed using the library's payphone, but instead of the Tindalls, they get the Bauer residence.

"I'm sorry, I'm looking for Laura Tindall," Dean says. "I must have the wrong number."

"Yes, sorry, they moved a co-" The woman dissolves into a coughing fit. "Excuse me. They moved, ah, a couple weeks ago. We're the new residents, I don't have her number."

"Sorry to bother you, thanks." Dean hangs up the payphone.

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Coughing fit? Does it a make a case now, Dean?"

Dean sighs. "Yes. Awesome. Let's get outta here."

\--

 

"Well, fuck," Dean says as they turn into Pine Boulevard. "I know this place. Pine Ridge. This is the same neighborhood."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious. Damn it."

"Maybe it'll be easier. Since you've researched the local history before."

"No, it's not going to be easier." They pass a hot mom in spandex walking her toy dog and Dean doesn't even think to leer, he's that thrown. It's just, if it had been anything else, any other case, he'd be on his game. But soon as Sam said the name of the town he knew things would be strange, for him. He shouldn't be surprised at how weird it's turning out to be.

"Sure, whatever." He looks at Dean, then back at the dash. "It's a case, we'll just do it."

Dean grunts. He's already got that feeling, when the firs are looming overhead, not so much evergreen as dark in his peripheral vision. Like the sky's too far away, and he wants to close his eyes.

-

Sam goes to City Hall to look up the what company did the construction: Coho, which is the name of some kind of salmon going by their logo, which Dean recognizes from the trucks sitting outside the neighboring development that's still under construction. They had a trailer there, so Dean and Sam drive back down to knock on the door.

The foreman who opens it looks doubtful, but lets them in when they tell him they're exterminators looking at the houses in the development across the street.

"We were wondering," Sam explains, "if you had any pest problems when you were building there. Any issues with the land - swampy areas, uh, if you ever dug up anything weird - like an old cemetery or burial ground."

They guy looks at them funny.

"Hollowed out spaces under the ground, or large organic material deposits, can allow for hives to -"

"No," the guy says decisively. "I been with this company for a decade, and I don't remember anything weird about that job. We don't hire union, we hire contractors, who are mostly men traveling through, so I'm afraid you might not find anyone else around here who worked there. Just Coho, and we would've known if anything… suspicious got dug up." He looks at them as if to indicate that they're the suspicious ones.

Dean blithely smiles at him. "And this one's going routinely?" he asks. "Nothing disturbed that could be affecting that development?" Even if it were, Dean can see the guy wouldn't want to tell him. Small company, don't hire union - they're cutting costs where they can, of course, and wouldn't want too many people around inspecting. Dean's sure some of the workers out there are still going through immigration, so to speak, and may be there under less-than-legal means.

The foreman is still squinting at them, his brow bulging over his eyebrows in a parody of surliness, so after his final "No," Sam and Dean thank him for his time and head out.

"He sure didn't seem to appreciate our questions," Dean says.

"No. Think he's hiding something?"

Dean scratches the back of his head. He watches Sam walk over to the other side of the Impala, sees little beads of sweat popping out on the nape of his neck, the ends of his hair starting to curl with wetness. "I dunno. We won't find out from him, though."

Sam looks around them at the construction, nods, says, "We drive around back?"

"You got it," Dean says.

They park in the cul-de-sac of Pine Ridge and walk through the hundred-foot-wide strip of trees to Autumn Grove, where a number of laborers are pouring cement foundation.

"Excuse me," Sam says, and only a few glance over. "Uh, disculpa?"

One of them, an older guy, looks up again from the wood he's measuring and squints at them. "You have business back here? This is a construction zone."

"Yessir," Dean says. "We're just here inspecting the development next door and we were wondering if we could talk to someone who was around then."

"That's me," says the man, still standing by his work.

Sam says, "Could we ask you a couple questions about the site, mister, uh."

"Saul." Mexican, probably, Dean thinks. Emphasis on the _u_. "Name's Saul. Not sure what you're looking for, that development went up right on schedule, without a hitch."

"You sure?" Dean interjects. "Two men died round here then, construction workers."

Saul blinks. "Yeah," he says. "Serial killer, I remember. Big deal with the police and all. I hardly knew them, couldn't tell you much about that business."

"Sure thing, Saul," Sam says smoothly. "But can you tell us, about that job there, there wasn't a problem with any of the houses? Specifically 20266 –" Saul's shaking his head, and Dean doesn't expect he remembers any of the houses by number, the man's put up so many in his life. "You never heard any strange noises, felt inexplicably ill...?"

"No. Nothing. You boys get going already, if you want to know anything you'll want to talk to the foreman and get outta the hardhat zone."

"Yessir," Sam says, and Dean nudges him, and Sam nods, and they back off pretty quickly.

"Serial killer, he said."

"Guess so," Dean says, because what else has he got? Just an uneasy feeling and a couple weeks without any leads, years ago.

They get in their car, and go to visit Ms. Bauer, of 20266 Pine Boulevard.

-

"Hello, Ms. Bauer, I'm Mr. Gilmore and this is Mr. Waters -"

Sam barely grimaces, but Dean can see it, and he smirks on the inside.

"- and we're the pest and mold specialists your landlord called in. Our manager called yesterday?" Dean had, from the same library payphone.

"Oh yes, my name's Crystal, come in." Crystal opens the door wider, then turns away to cough twice, wet and tearing. The look on her face gives Dean that unreasonable sick certainty that this is in fact their sort of thing. She looks like she hasn't been sleeping well, pale with rings under her eyes. "Come in," she says. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, thank you," they say, and she says, "Just a second, then, I have to turn my stove off. Sit down." She goes, and Sam murmurs, "Gilmore."

"Yeah?"

"You had to make me Roger Waters?"

"What, the star not good enough for you?"

"Whatever, you got _David Gilmore_. You always said Waters' ego broke up the band. Going off on his own." Sam's being a little pointed about this. Oh.

Dean shrugs. He hadn't really thought about it that hard, but Sam looks actually bothered. "Whatever, man, sorry. At least I didn't give you the guy who went crazy."

When Crystal comes back, they explain that it was mostly procedural, considering the problems the previous residents had. "I'm glad you're here," she says, "we've been getting sick and I'm not sure if it's spring pollen or this house."

"Mhm," Sam says. "What kind of sick?"

"Nose and throat and sinus stuff. I haven't been sleeping well. New house and all, but."

"I understand. We'll get the place in good shape, ma'am." He goes on, and Dean lets him, about how they're going to have to fumigate, of course, so she'll need to have somewhere else to stay for a few days, three nights at least, and they'll also be looking underneath the house.

She says there's a sump pump down there a previous resident had installed, but sure, there's still probably moisture, good for molds, insects, infestations. Crystal seems worn down by all this, and Dean, who's gotten by all his life with no more than a cold each year besides his endless cuts and bruises, can't imagine the weariness of some intangible unending illness that creeps into you and settles, saps your energy, makes the smallest things difficult. It's just her and her daughter, she says, they'll be staying at their brother's now - "We were planning on a couple weeks already, we haven't seen them in a while, and we'll see if it's environmental."

Sam assures her that they'll resolve the issue, whatever it is. Dean nods. Sam is very earnestly optimistic for her, like he is for all the people they help, a way that Sam rarely is for Dean –never so much _it'll be okay,_ more like _this is so screwed up, we're so screwed up._ It hurts, when Dean thinks of it like that, but he supposes he understands. It probably takes it out of him, all that earnestness, no matter how natural it looks on his young face. If Sam needs Dean to be the guy he can be a sullen annoyance around, Dean will be that guy.

"We'll keep you updated on what we know, as we find out," Sam says. "Now, can we ask a few questions? They might seem strange but we need to know everything." She nods. "Do you ever feel any strange drafts or cold spots? Flickering lights?"

-

On the way back to the motel, Sam's chewing at his nails, brooding or something. "What if we get sick?"

"You allergic to mold, Sammy?"

"Shut up, I mean, what if we catch the curse too? Or whatever. We'll be in the house, it could get us. Like that poltergeist in Lawrence.

"We'll be fine. Only kids and old people have died, and Crystal's been there a couple weeks with a cold. Look at us!" Dean swings a hand over to thump Sam's chest, and Sam jerks away ineffectively. "Well, you could use a little more muscle."

Sam grumbles something like "brains over brawn", rubbing his chest. "Come on, like that actually hurt," Dean says, and Sam stops, holding his hand there, looks at Dean, but Dean doesn't look back, he's keeping his eyes on the road, and he isn't thinking about Sam's hand where his was, pressing over his heart.

-

They take the next day to gather house-cleaning supplies, so to speak. Dean's got the number of a girl a few towns over who carries the stuff to make poltergeist bags and spirit-cleansing concoctions. He flirts with her by rote but she's got eyes for Sam, which is hilarious. He'd accuse the woman of robbing the cradle if Sam weren't so oblivious about it all. Crystal said she and her daughter were in fact leaving town that evening, so they spend the rest of the day stuffing sachets in the motel room, passing a bottle of tequila back and forth. They pack everything up, planning on squatting at Crystal's while the job goes down, partly to keep an eye on everything but really mostly to save money on the motel room.

Bright and early the next morning, they get up with the sun. Dean slept restless and over-alert all night, and figured he wasn't the only one judging by all Sam's tossing and turning. Six o'clock, they roll out to get coffee; six thirty and they're surreptitiously unloading the trunk, wary of any morning joggers who might spot their gun and knife collection. Salt, anti-poltergeist bags, everything they can think to purify the house itself. Crystal's left them a spare key under the mat, and they let themselves in, easy as any professionals. Sure beats picking locks, and they've got a fridge for their beers. Sweet job, if you don't count the haunted part.

Splitting up the job of locking down the house, they work on opposite ends to be thorough, so it's an hour or so of silence before they're finished laying down salt along every window and in the corners. Dean whistles Metallica. Sam tells him to quit it once he's in earshot, and they're both salting the living room. Dean finishes the song and stops. The run-through with the EMF goes just as uneventfully, and Dean's starting to wonder if they've got any case at all here, but then he thinks of Crystal's sick look, and her young girl, and Sam's assurances that they'd find something. They'll find something.

"Well, you wanna start punching holes in walls to check for ghost mold?" Dean's leaning against the kitchen counter with a glass of water while Sam flips through his notes from Missouri on purifying houses and detecting spirits and poltergeists.

"Ghost mold." Sam huffs and blows his bangs up off his forehead. Dean would tell him it's an adorable habit, but he doesn't feel like getting hit just now. "If we're going to put holes in her walls you're going to have to patch them back up. We're hunters, not exterminators."

"Speak for yourself. I've done a little drywall work in my day. I've worked honest jobs."

Sam laughs, a real laugh, and Dean finds himself smiling along with even though by all rights he should be protesting.

That's the easy part, though. After a while of poking around for ghosts or mold or anything particularly haunted-looking, they have to look under the house, get down in the crawlspace to see if they've gone and built over some Indian burial grounds or monster's lair. Sam thinks it could be a weak haunting, the spirit diffusing its malaise over the household, but he admits it's all speculation from here. Getting out the shovels and holding the guns close, they don't talk, still tired. As Sam said, if he can't sleep he can't sleep, and Dean won't tell Sam he'll take more of the work on because of it, because Dean will take more on, and he won't give Sam any chances to argue.

"This sucks," Dean says, emerging from under the house. "Digging graves is one thing. Digging tunnels is..."

Sam agrees with a jerk of his head and a grunt as he shovels the last pile of rocks off to the side. Dean's dug out a sizeable pile, but they've still got some distance to go. He slides down to sit with his back against the side of the house, drinking from their water bottle.

"It sucks," he repeats after the last gulp, conclusive.

"Uh huh," says Sam, looking kind of sleepy.

"Want some of my coffee?"

"Nah, 'm good."

"At least it doesn't have a basement. Then we'd have to break through some concrete. Steal some jackhammers -" Sam, crawling in, takes this moment to kick weakly at Dean while his legs are still sticking out. Dean laughs. "We've dug graves up and filled them back up in a night. But there's no top on a grave," and Sam probably can't hear him now, "so you can at least lift the dirt out, instead of having to shove it behind you."

Sam's stopped short of how far Dean went, his ass and legs showing, and Sam says "Goddamn it, Dean. You need to get some broader shoulders."

"What?" Dean says. "Shut up. That's not true."

"Yeah man, I can't fit all the way, gets too narrow."

"Suck it in, Sammy, that's not your shoulders."

"Thought I was skinny," says Sam, and Dean smacks his ass to prove his point.

"Hey!" Sam says, kicking again, but Dean's out of the way now, laughing. "Fuck you!"

"Fightin words, Sammy."

"Shut up already, it's Sam!"

"Whatcha gonna do about it."

"Make you dig -" Sam scoots out backwards fast as he can "- till my shoulders fit."

"Don't think so." Dean's still laughing on the ground, and Sam punches him in the shoulder, then grabs Dean's coffee and guzzles the rest. "Fuck you," says Dean, but he smiles. "You going back in now?"

"Keep your hands off me this time."

Dean raises his hands in front of him, palms towards Sam, all innocent, makes a _backing off now_ face. "What kind of creep do you think I am," he says, and Sam only snorts and shakes his head at that. He lies down again and sticks the shovel in to scrape down the sides of the tunnel.

Dean purposefully does not look at Sam's ass, even though Sam is focused on digging. It's hard, okay? What does Sam expect Dean to do, it's like telling someone not to think about alligators.

Dean's turn again twenty minutes later, then Sam's turn in half an hour, and by then the day's turned hot. By the time Sam stops digging and starts to wriggle out (his boots almost all the way in, and they're getting decently far) Dean has rolled up his sleeves and contemplated shucking the jumpsuit entirely. It is not a jumpsuit day. He curses Sam and his stupid costumes, but they do lend the appearance of authority to what, to the neighbors, must look like an incredibly sketchy operation.

Sam probably agrees about the too-hot-for-jumpsuits thing. "Your turn," he says, voice muffled still. His suit is damp and dirty, and when he comes out butt-first Dean would snort but he's not himself, and Sam can't see anyway. He lets himself look at Sam, long and gangly and absurd, like he's been letting himself watch Sam a lot, off and on, because Sam is here, now. Because when he was here before Sam wasn't here. Because he's got to watch Sam, who has the Shining or whatever; because Sam's not a monster and as long as Dean keeps looking at him it's because seeing his little brother makes him happy, okay?

So he just keeps an eye on Sam.

Sam's bangs are sticking to his forehead when he looks to Dean for the water. Dean hands him the bottle. Sam drinks some, splashes a handful on his face, drinks some more.

"Gets hot down there," he says. "Wet, too."

"Yeah, I can see you watering those pitstains." Sam bitchfaces and hands Dean the short-handled shovel in response.

If Dean waits around a bit to watch Sam undo the buttons on his jumpsuit and strip out of the arms, roll the fabric down to his elastic-cinched waist so he's only got his white shirt damp and sorta stuck to him - well, if Dean hesitates long enough to see all that, who cares? When Sam looks at him funny, or asks, absently, "What?" Dean just says, "Tomorrow we're so wearing our regular clothes," and climbs in, leaving Sam to feel like the weird one with the itchy collar.

-

 

They can't finish the whole digging job in a day. It's more than a grave's worth of digging, even with part of it dug out already around the sump pump. And they're in no rush, not like a normal night of grave-desecrating where they have a single night to move some average of six feet of earth. So they don't finish in a day. It gets dark and they're exhausted, and they've got some time to work on this with Crystal planning to be gone for a week or more, and really this is a pretty cush job. They get to squat in a nice almost-new house, with plenty of space and hot water and food in the fridge. They've just got to make sure to drive their car off once it gets dark, act like they're calling it a day and clocking off their exterminator timecards, then park it back in some woods and walk through the trees in the dark to discreetly hop the back fence and enter through the sliding back door.

After watching this Denzel Washington explosions-and-intrigue movie on TV, Sam nabs the pullout couch, and Dean gets the cushions. He goes up to steal the comforter off of Crystal's bed – he's not going to get it dirty, okay Sam, she won't even notice – and by the time he's brushed his teeth and opened and looked in the bathroom cabinet, he finds Sam conked out. He's feeling pretty woozy himself, nothing like a day of digging to wear you out, but he's got some aches and a stuffy nose that make him want to curl up and sleep twelve hours.

He's out like a light, but his sleep is strange and restless. He's dreaming he's on a beach, he and Sam are on a beach, and the sun and the air are hot, and something's chasing after them. Every time he looks back he can't see, though, but Sam can see them, Sam's eyes are wide and he's grabbing for Dean. His hands are freezing. Dean jerks away, but he's still so hot, so when there's a cold shivering body sliding up next to his, he grabs on, a bit of a shock but drinking up that excess heat. Dean's somewhat aware that he might be partly awake too, but he can't do anything about that, he's sunk so far into the dream that it barely registers and everything is filtered through the same feverish daze. He curls up and digs his face into a cushion, and falls back asleep.

When he wakes up in the morning, Sam's just where he left him, scrunched up on the short pullout with a blanket over him. Dean's rolled off his cushions and is only half-covered by the comforter he took off Crystal's bed. He's still pretty warm, but the sun's been up for a while and they're on the south side of the house. He imagines it's going to be a hot day, and he groans. Sam shifts and snores.

They make breakfast, both of them sniffling and stuffy-nosed, then hop the fence out back and drive their car around again. Dean refused to wear the jumpsuit and, to his slight disappointment, Sam did too, agreeing that they'd both have a better time in their own clothes. They had a couple fake IDs for exterminators or whatever in case they were caught breaking into a house; these ones worked on Crystal and they'd work for anyone else who was suspicious.

By one in the afternoon they've reached the end of the sump pump tunnel, and are digging further by the increasing beeps of the EMF. Once they'd picked up a signal the other day, they checked against the floorboards of the house, hoping there wouldn't be too much distance or too weak a signal to reach through the wood. Fortunately spiritual residue broadcast pretty well, and they'd picked up what seemed to be a good jump in the readings somewhere underneath the living room they've reached the end of the sump pump tunnel and are using the EMF. Its blips and wails guide their digging, till suddenly it goes wild over a certain area, just sideways of the pump, and they dig that out more carefully with trowels till Dean hits something.

"Got something!" he shouts, even while remembering that Sam might not be able to hear him anymore.

"Something" turns out to be part of a skeleton, surrounded by what looks like clumpy dirt but is really a putrid rot-and-dirt mix. It triggers Dean's gag reflex, but he's a hunter, he digs up bodies all the time, dammit. Usually they're not at this awkward stage of decomposition. He grits his teeth and brushes more dirt away from the wall, knocks some bones down, swears. He wriggles back till Sam grabs his boots and drags him out the rest of the way.

"Dude, there's a body down there." Sam's eyes are wide, not exactly shock but certainly satisfaction.

Between him and Sam they manage to uncover a good part of what turns out to look like probably a complete skeleton. It's bundled together, not tied up with rope but partially covered in a cloth that's mostly rotted. There are not-rotted acrylic yarn tassels, though, and those come in neon colors. In the crickety twilight, they look at each other, familiar and sort of awed and even a little excited. The thrill of the hunt. Sam takes pictures with his phone, and now, now they've got something to work with.

"All right, salt and burn," Dean says, reaching for the bag, but Sam stops his arm, saying, "Is it even gonna burn? The thing's damp, through and through."

"What, you wanna take a hair dryer to it?"

"We have to dig it out and let it dry."

"You want us to disturb the restless dead before getting rid of it? Are you sure about that?"

"It's still afternoon. We'll let it sit in the sun, there's plenty of sun left, let it dry out, then we'll burn it before it gets dark. That's safer."

Dean waves Sam away. He knows he's right. This is gonna be a pain, though.

"How'd a body get under the house, anyway? This part wasn't disturbed by the sump pump."

"Must've happened during construction," Sam muses, and then, "Oh, hell no."

"Foul play?" Dean says, and winces at the same time as Sam.

"You've been watching too many cop shows."

Dean glares. "Then, someone ganked this sucker."

"Who wrapped him up?" They both shrug at that. Makes no sense.

Dean's shaking his head as Sam crawls back under the house, set on carefully extracting the remains. They manage to pull them out intact as they can, put them gently into a pile that's hopefully hidden from the neighbors' sight, pour a salt circle around them, go inside to wash up and have a drink.

"You find any kind of ID on the body?" Sam asks. He gulps from his beer, and Dean isn't watching the line from the long bottleneck to Sam's own moving throat. He just sees it, is all.

"No. No ID but there were some coins, some mulchy cash. Who the hell takes ID but not cash?"

"Maybe he didn't have any," Sam muses.

"What, you mean –"

"Undocumented immigrants, yeah. Who'd know he was missing? Who'd care?"

Dean is quiet. Sam cares. Sam would've been a lawyer, and seeing him now, angry and passionate, it makes Dean love him all the more, even as much as it makes him afraid. Afraid of a Sam he doesn't know, afraid of reliving that time in his life when what Sam wanted sent him away from Dean.

They sit there on the pullout bed, mostly quiet. When the sun starts setting, Dean gets the gasoline, and Sam gets the salt, and they go shake the cans out over the disintegrated bag of bones.

"Adios, Klamath," Dean says. Sam sneezes, then lights the motel matchbook and tosses it on the pile.

Dean coughs on the smoke, and Sam thumps him on the back, practically congratulatory. They're grinning, already a little warm and giddy and rattling loose-limbed with success. They watch the body burn till it's all smoldering, then embers, then ashes, and the sun is just barely a glow through the trees. It feels good.

They've got tomorrow to fill in the pit, they decide, and maybe they could afford to wait till tomorrow to see if the EMF has cleared up, make sure the house is de-haunted. Tonight they're going to pick up burgers and a case of beer, nothing too much but enough to get them relaxing, and they're going to come back to their newly de-haunted house to watch some cheesy action movie they've seen a billion times before, and they're going to laugh and talk over it till Sam can pass out on his pull-out for a bit and Dean can let himself sleep too. This is a damn good ending, Dean thinks. Better day than what he would've even hoped for, years ago.

They put the stuff in the trunk, shovels clattering, gas can thudding. "Sam," Dean says, and Sam looks over and Dean tosses him the keys. Sam lights up and doesn't say anything, but he practically runs over to the driver's side, and Dean smirks.

 _Damn good_ , Dean thinks. The trunk slams, echoing off the barely-lit houses around them, and in the echo Dean hears clear as day the sharp ring of metal on metal, the rough scrape of two machetes, _shing, shing, shing._

-

"Holy _fuck_." Dean feels like something just dropped a brick in his stomach. Sam starts the Impala, but Dean bangs his fists on the trunk and shouts, "Sam! Get your ass out of the car and open the trunk!"

"What the hell?" Sam asks, but he's pouring out the front, not hesitating.

"I should've fucking known," Dean says, catching the keys Sam tosses. "It's that machete thing. We need salt rounds. Fuck."

Sam grabs a pistol and the sawed-off Dean shoves at him, and a silver knife, and the bottle of holy water, and a hank of rope -

"You're saying it's this monster again? Dean, are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure, I heard it, those are no suburban garden shears –"

"We don't even know what we're up against."

"No, we don't, but it's out there, and maybe it'll kill someone tonight if we don't stop it."

Sam doesn't say anything, which means he gets it, of course he gets it, come on, Dean, stop running your mouth and start running towards the shadows. Towards the half-built houses on the other side of the strip of trees, and their fenced-in pits, hiding who the hell knows what.

-

Whatever the woods is hiding, they're hiding it good, and Dean's all the more nervous for it. There's no one working on the development tonight, no bright lights glaring through the trees, no voices or machines.

"What if we just fucked with the spirit? What if that was it, in the bundle, and we unbound some violent spirit?" Sam asks.

"No way it could be. We salted those bones before we burnt them."

Sam makes a frustrated noise. "What the hell else could it be?"

"I don't know!" Dean realizes he's shouting, and he lowers his voice, The houses are so close by, what if someone came out to see what the problem was and got themselves sliced open? He shakes his head.

"I don't know what this thing is. It killed two people last time, two construction workers, and that's all I know about its M.O. It butchers construction workers at night."

"Good thing we're not construction workers." Sam sounds a little shaken and giddy. Dean stomps around some, but doesn't go anywhere. There's hardly anywhere to go. It's pretty dark but he can still see through the strip of woods, from end to end, the lights of one development to the dim walls of another. He has no friggin clue what they're doing and he's out in the strip of woods with Sam, listening for someone, something. Dean hates waiting for things to jump out at him.

They can't just leave, not when they heard what they heard, and Dean knowing what he knows. They walk around with their flashlights for ages, but eventually they have to just sit somewhere and keep an eye out for whatever it is. Dean doesn't let himself doze off, but Sam's nodded off for a good half hour next to him when Dean starts seeing the sky lighten, the occasional noise of traffic on the road again, and the rustle of trees. Then, the machetes.

He jumps up, and Sam's instantly awake, scrambling blindly to his feet. Dean grabs Sam's arm and pulls him in the direction the sound might've come from, towards the hill.

It's just the same as four years ago. Dean is too late. There's a construction worker with shreds of neon vest, the hardhat still on his head, unbroken. Maybe the first on the job site, because Dean can't see anyone else there. There was no sound Dean had heard beforehand; the body is still warm and nearly perfectly stripped of fat. Sam covers his mouth. Dean does too, and uses his other hand to reach towards the guy's shredded pocket. He pulls out the wallet with his fingertips, and it's wet with blood but not totally soaked. This guy's got all his cards and cash.

"Ramon Burnhart," Dean tells Sam. There's something lumpy in there. He digs in with a finger; it's wedged inside the billfold part, right in the corner - a couple pebbles and some grit, Dean sees, stained with blood and rough around the edges. Dean spits on them and they sort of shine.

"This is - ugh," Sam says, coming closer to where Dean is crouched next to the guy's ribboned remains. "You're right, not an animal, no tracks at all. Not even a sign of being dragged. We have to get out of here."

"Yeah," Dean says shortly, and grabs Sam's hand, hauled to his feet.

-

They don't go to Coho Construction, to ask the surly foreman in his trailer office any more questions about dead laborers and buried secrets. Sam is furious, and Dean's pretty pissed too, but they both know that this is the way the world works. They drive to the sparkling new Home Depot around sunrise, 5:30am, where the immigrant day laborers are hanging out round the corner near the garden center.

They get a few wary looks - their car doesn't look big enough for them to be hiring, so what do they want? Most of the men won't talk, and some of them, Dean suspects, don't expect to understand. "Disculpa, disculpa," Sam says, "buscamos alguien quien sabe del Pine Ridge, uh, los pinos? El barrio Pine Ridge?"

Dean sidles up to him and says, "Hey, that guy on the end. From the development yesterday, yeah?" He walks further back to where the guy – probably their dad's age – is sitting on his lunch bucket. "Scuse me," Dean says.

The guy looks at him, gets up, looking between him and Sam. "You hiring?" he asks.

"Saul," Sam says. He remembers the guy's name. "You probably don't remember us, but we asked you a few questions the other day. When you were working on the Autumn Grove development."

Saul frowns and the guy next to him looks uncomfortable. "Look, I got papers, I ain't bothering no one."

Dean says, "We came to you because we know the company won't tell us it's done anything wrong. We know something happened on that job back in '02 and we know nobody wants to talk about it."

The guy pales and Sam elbows Dean, but leans in, trying not to loom too much. "We dug something up under one of those houses in Pine Ridge that the company's not going to like, and we know they're going to try to shut it up. I know some of you have a lot at stake. But if you're keeping secrets when another man died yesterday –"

"What the hell are you trying to accuse me of?" The way Saul looks at them, he looks scared, scared enough to know that they're not just talking about falling-apart houses or undocumented workers.

"We're not accusing you," Dean says. "We need your help, we're not gonna go to just anyone about this. You do know." Saul blinks, and sighs, and accedes. "Then you know we gotta do something about what we found."

-

Saul says he'll talk to them there behind the building. He's watching out, making sure absolutely no one can overhear. Dean looks at Sam as if to say, _You think he did it?_ and Sam just shrugs.

"The old man who found that guy, the one you found - he's not here anymore. But he said he knew how you had to take care of it, when a guy died on the job."

"What was it? An accident?"

"Foul play?" Dean asks. Sam twitches.

"An accident, as far as we knew. Fell in the foundation pit and broke his neck. All the other guys just wanted to get rid of the body, thinking they'd get investigated, found out, deported, then the job would shut down for everyone else who wasn't so worried about whether they were legal or not. We let the old man do his thing, but we hurried him, and we never, never did feel quite right about how it went down. The kid didn't have any family here, no one to miss him, but who knows about back home, yeah? But nobody knew where he was from."

"Well, at least you gave him some kind of proper burial," Sam says.

Saul thins his lips. "Strangest burial I'd ever seen."

"Why'd you let him do it?" Dean asks.

"He wanted to. And we, I dunno. It was dark, just as the night shift was ending. We all kind of believed him. We wanted it out of our hands, anyway – no one'd believe we just found him, but no one'd care about him either."

"So, what'd they do?"

"Bundle him up, like. The old man poured something from a flask on him, put down cigarettes, said a prayer I guess. Apologized to the dead guy for not having the right stuff, asked him not to haunt the place."

Sam and Dean look at each other. Saul just says, "He was an old-fashioned man, not from here. When he finished, everyone put dirt over it as fast as we could and laid down the crawlspace beams, had to get out. Everyone was afraid of that killer, then, we didn't want to get killed or tangled up in that. Didn't want anything to do with any of it."

Dean asks, "What do you know about the jobsite murders that year?" He senses Sam twitch beside him but he stays quiet.

Saul's face is still pretty stricken. "What're you asking me all this for? I don't know anything - They called it a serial killer but that old man didn't believe them. He said it was sacrifice."

"What?"

"The dead men were a sacrifice. The ones found dead, and this poor guy in the pit, even though it was clear he'd just fallen. All of them. The old guy said the earth didn't like what the workers were doing, all the digging and building. Don't make sense to me, people are digging and building everywhere."

"Well, that's something, I guess," Dean says. "Thanks."

"You boys," Saul says, "you're not police or exterminators or anything, I can tell. What do you want, asking all these questions?"

Sam, of course, is the one to step in to answer that. "We're trying to find out the truth. So we can put things to rest."

Saul seems satisfied with this. He nods, once, and turns to go back to waiting for a pickup.

-

"So," Dean says. "Some satanic ritual, huh?"

Sam frowns. "Sounds like we went and burnt the only thing that was appeasing your ghost butcher."

"But why the sick house?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything about this stuff." Sam's hands are twitching on his legs, like he's itching for a laptop, a keyboard, a computer or book to research. They're both still buzzed on adrenaline, despite the fact that they did a shitton of digging and got no sleep the night before. "Maybe he did it wrong." Sam is thinking out loud. "Maybe he messed up. Old man, who knows?"

Dean shakes his head. "I dunno. Old people remember that stuff better than anyone else, you know?"

"It's gotta be that, though, that was making our sick house. Maybe it was just stuff from the body, gases seeping up or bacteria that was making everyone sick."

"Or supernatural stuff. Maybe the guy himself had some unfinished business. I bet he didn't want to be a sacrifice, you know?"

"Bet not. Guy's not even from this country, didn't have any family around – no one even knew he was dead. He was just left there, for the world to forget. He never even got to see his family before he died. Maybe it's homesickness."

Dean laughs, short. "Homesickness. Man, ghosts make awful puns. We're sure we got the house, though?"

"Occam's razor."

"What?" Dean quick turns his head to look at Sam. Accusatory, annoyed at having to ask what Sam's talking about. Come on, man. Plain English.

"Just, the simplest explanation for something is the most likely. Whether it's the ghost or the body itself, we probably got the house fixed. We can go back and check it out - anyway, we've gotta stay in the neighborhood, there's your old case to deal with now."

Dean doesn't say anything at first, then, "All right." He sighs. "Back to the library, then?"

"Yeah. We know about the sacrifice part now, and the stuff the old guy said – we've got more to research."

"I hate it when you're right," Dean says. Sam laughs, a short bark. Dean smiles a little grimly.

-

It's the biggest pain, in fact. Dean knows he already did a ton of research on machetes and bells, and maybe there's more on it, maybe Sam has the key with his JSTOR access now, but it really bugs the hell out of him to be back here where he was four years ago.

Sam, though, Sam is doing beautifully. He's in his element, despite being sleep-deprived and occasionally bitchy. Dean can hardly look away, and he's glad for Sam's inhuman powers of concentration when he's got a block of text in front of him. Dean's pretty wiped, himself.

Sam's hounding the trail of the burial rite, and Dean retreads the old ground of machetes and the bells. He reads about all kinds of things: Colombian neckties, and the kinds of cuts you make from a man, not a hog. There are legends of machetes that are cursed, machetes that carry the spirit of their owners, machetes passed down in families. And bells, there are church bells, gold and silver bells ringing in the mountain churches of South America, a grim inheritance from the conquest.

Burial practices in Mexico (or Guatemala, or Honduras, or El Salvador) don't seem to have much to do with houses, but Sam keeps going, and eventually:

"This is it," Sam says, nose nearly touching his laptop screen. "The Andes. Bundles of dead llamas, under houses. Gives them… souls, I think."

"Souls?" Dean asks. "What's that mean?" He moves to look over Sam's shoulder, and Sam's so absorbed he doesn't even notice.

"Means the houses don't fall apart. And, llamas are sort of an analog for people – I wonder if burying a person under a house would be stronger?"

"Like infecting people?" he murmurs. Sam twitches, jerks his head around to look at Dean like he's ridiculously close, nearly hits Dean's nose in the process.

"Jesus, Dean, watch where you're - yeah. Yeah, I guess so, now move," Sam says, jerking his chair out and ducking away from Dean's face. "Need more books."

Dean goes back to his library computer, looking for things in the Andes now, and it's not another hour before he finds it: "Slaughterers." He writes down "ñakuq - slaughterer - sacrificer - Quechua." Sam's back and leaning over his shoulder now, Dean can practically feel him breathing down his neck. "They use their machetes, or some kind of machine, to steal your body fat as sacrifice for the mining that men do. Tit for tat. Gold," Dean says, seeing the word pop up in the text. "Mostly for gold."

"Yeah. Mostly gold. And other metals, like the machetes."

"And gold bells - people made bells out of metal."

"Wow," Sam says. "That's exactly it, what the guy said. It's about digging out the earth to build all the housing. But that is crazy, Saul was right, wouldn't that mean that this would happen everywhere?"

"Huh," says Dean. "Gold."

"Yeah, Dean, get over it."

"Shut up," Dean says. "I'm thinking." Sam doesn't even ask Dean if it hurts, thinking. They're both pretty tired. "I found something in the butchered guy's wallet." He digs around in his pocket and pulls out a handful of change, a bullet casing, nail clippers, little screws.

"You what?" Sam hisses.

"What?" Dean asks. "I was gonna show you, I forgot about it till now. Anyway, it's just rocks," and there they are, he picks out the bean-sized bits that are a little shiny under all the grime. "They don't look like gold, but they could be, you know?"

Sam squints at them, jabs at them with a finger, and his eyes are wide. "You think this is it? How we get the guy? Hold onto these rocks ourselves and make him come after us."

"You're not being the bait," Dean says. "This is my fucked-up case."

"Well _you're_ not being the bait. We'll both do it."

Dean looks up at Sam from under his brows and can see Sam's face, knows he's not going to budge any. He doesn't have a logical argument about how it's a better idea to give him the gold rocks, and then Sam can get the shot off. He just has a hunch, or a guilt-driven sense of justice.

They walk out of the library with a plan, Dean twitching and anxious to finally resolve something, put it to rest. Put away this whole thing that's fucking with them, so they can both sleep a bit better and Dean can get out of this strange place that makes him notice Sam _all the time_. They'll get something else maybe, or just get out of there with no lead at all, drive till they hit the ocean maybe, and Dean can stop thinking about the _way_ he looks at Sam, go back to ignoring it and just looking, because Sam's still his brother and he's still got to keep him safe and close by, next to him on the bench seat of the Impala. That's all Dean really wants.

-

They go back, to Home Depot, where the laborers the trucks picked up this morning are being dropped off at the end of the day.

"Hope we haven't missed him," Sam says, but then Dean sees Saul and heads straight for him.

"Been digging up anything interesting?" Dean asks. Saul looks irritated, and under that, nervous.

"No, I already said -"

"Let me rephrase. Valuable? Precious? Metal?"

He frowns. "You boys," he says, and pitches his voice even lower. "There are some shiny rocks around here, yeah? We're calling them fool's gold. But nobody knows and if they do know they won't tell anyone, just sell it. We don't want that sort of problem for us or the construction company. And we don't want outsiders horning in, you got that?"

"Listen, Saul." Dean is dead serious. "You've got a worse problem than us on your ass. Tell everyone to stop, even put it back, unless you want another guy killed. There's a slaughterer, a spirit with machetes, and even if you don't believe in spirits I know you believe that guy got killed back in the woods for _something_."

"Where'd you...? Listen, what do _you_ know about what's going on?"

Sam interrupts. "You helped us when we found that buried body. That bundle was protecting those homes, and when we put that guy to rest the thing that was here killing people four years ago is back. You've got to help us. We fucked up the old man's sacrifice but now it's killing again. We did our research, and we're sure, we're sure this is absolutely important. Please."

Saul looks dubious but resolved. "I'll talk to the guys, do what I can. Not all of them believe in this crazy stuff, but it's only fool's gold."

"Yeah," Dean says, biting the inside of his cheek.

-

"Even if they put that gold back, Sam, and I'm not saying they will, we've still got to figure out how to gank that spirit." Dean is sick of these trees, goddamn it. They tell you they're evergreens, and they're beautiful, but when the sun is starting to go down they just make everything dark. The northwest always makes him feel like he's boxed in, after spending months on end in the open Midwest.

"What can we do?" Sam's looking over his stack of printouts, hunting for a clue, but if they haven't found anything yet… "He's not the ghost kind of spirit, from what we read. There's no body to destroy. We just know what he wants. The lore just says don't travel alone and don't fall asleep on buses and you'll avoid him, nothing on how to find and kill him."

"Well, fuck it. I'll go after it. Ow!" Sam hits him open-handed across the chest and it takes Dean by surprise, makes him jerk the wheel a bit. "What the hell?"

"Stop talking like that," says Sam, and Dean looks up, surprised at the quavering vehemence in Sam's tone. " _You're_ not doing it. _We're_ doing it." Dean's chest pangs. "I know you feel like you have to make up for how you didn't catch it in the past, but you couldn't have. Don't make it harder for yourself than it has to be."

"Come on, Sam -"

"Bullshit. Getting yourself killed is not the job." The way Sam is looking at him makes him think, Sam, you are so much less okay than you're acting, but he's at a loss for what to say. "We're going after it together. We know where it is, it won't be that hard to find. Just that bit of woods."

Dean blinks, and nods. "Sure." One way or another.

They gear up in the half-light, salt rounds and iron and silver knives, minerals to use against the mineral avenger, and walk to the woodsy strip to sit concealed in the brush.

They trade off naps the whole night, always next to each other, in case they get taken by surprise. When Dean wakes up around four a.m., he stretches, says quiet to Sam, "Gotta take a leak." He walks a few steps, not too far or else Sam will fuss, and he fingers the shiny pebbles he just snagged from Sam's pocket. He thinks, _Come and get me._

He turns, says "Sam," and sees Sam's dim figure turn, and like magic, like in his dream, Sam's eyes widen and cheeks hollow, and Dean hears _shing, shing, shing,_ right behind him.

"Dean!"

Dean drops like a stone and Sam fires the shot. Dean figures it's salt by the whump it makes, and then there's a bloodcurdling growl behind him. He kicks out with this boots, lashes with his knife, but the thing's got him by one of his feet, his legs, "Sam!" he shouts, "Sam! Metal!"

The thing is fast as hell dragging him towards the hillside, tall and shadowed so all Dean can see is its black cloak flapping filthy in its wake, against Dean. He's got an idea, though. "Hey!" he shouts. "Eat this!" He takes his knife and draws it across his forearm, flexes, lets the blood drip on to the ground. The thing – it flickers like a spirit, Dean sees, black coat and a black hat with a pale, barely-distinct face - pauses, giving Dean time to reach into his pocket, grab the gold, and scrape the pieces across his wound. They're covered in blood again.

The slaughterer spirit drops him, looms all shadows and the smell of raw meat. Dean grabs the stinking solid cloak and pulls himself up by it, and grits out, "Take your damn rocks, motherfucker," before he shoves the bloody gold into the thing's mouth.

It swallows the rocks, and shoves him down to the ground. The slaughterer's machete is upraised, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, and Dean gulps, thinking, _Well, it was worth a try._

"Hey!" Sam shouts suddenly, and the slaughterer's head turns, and Dean takes his chance to stab at the spirit's leg with the bloody knife still in his hand, just as Sam shoots the thing with what Dean guesses are iron and silver rounds.

It screams. It screams and howls and falls, crashing to its knees, crumbling, and the hillside behind it, behind Dean, crumbles too, falling on Dean, and Sam's running over grabbing Dean's arm, dragging him out of the worst of it, out of the way of the falling earth.

They sit there panting for a bit, and Dean wriggles to pull his leg out of the dirt, when Sam gives him a hard glancing punch to the cheekbone.

"Ow! Mother _fucker!_ " Dean grabs at his face.

"What the fuck did you do that for, Dean? Are you suicidal?"

And Dean almost laughs, a little hysterical, and that question, good question, Sammy - of all the times he could've gotten himself killed, it would be this time, wouldn't it? Sam's right, damn him. Dean's been really stupid. Years ago he was too miserable to face up to anything. No, now, when Sam is with him, when Dean's got something to lose, he decides to do the stupid fucking thing and run right at the monster with a knife to his own wrist.

"Dean, God, Dean, just talk to me, you're all right -"

"Yeah, Sam."

"- you're the stupidest -"

"Hey!"

"-no, you deserve that -" Sam is gabbling now, grabbing Dean's arm so hard it hurts, looking hard at him, but Dean's not looking at Sam. He knew this part wouldn't be fun.

"Sam, I had to."

"Like hell!"

"I had to!"

"You didn't have to do any of this. Why do you always - Dean." Sam is grabbing his other arm, grabbing at the side of his face to try to make Dean look at him, and Dean won't, Dean's just lying here against a pile of hillside feeling his brother's hands on him, listening to his voice, this thing, the thing he can have now, for the time being, the thing he has. And he won't look at Sam, because there are things he can't have, all right, so he won't ask, he won't put himself out there. He's just going to let Sam hit him and grab him and pull him out of the way, as long as Sam doesn't stop coming after him.

"You don't get it, Dean, you don't get it."

"What?" Dean finally says, because Sam's somehow sounding more miserable than he should when they're both alive and they've won again.

"You don't have to." Sam's breathing is thick. "You think you have to die to protect me."

"I wasn't gonna let that thing -"

"Yeah but look at you, you were gonna give yourself up. You would've, if I hadn't got here in time, if that bloody knife and rock hadn't worked. Dean, I want some of you left for me."

Dean shuts up.

"This isn't four years ago. It isn't your case, it's our case and I'm here, so you can't go let yourself die on me. If you're not going to take care of yourself – You're all I've – You're it, Dean."

"Sammy," Dean says, and he makes the mistake of looking.

Sam inhales, sharp.

Dean didn't know when his hands got on Sam's arms but they're there, on his biceps and shoulders, fingers curving around to the back of Sam's neck, thumb coming up to brush his throat, solid and there. "Sammy," Dean says, and he doesn't have anything more to say, except, "Sorry I," and, soft, "C'mere."

Sam is shaking. He's grabbing Dean's collar, his fist clenched, tugging. "Stupid," he chokes out. "Why can't you."

Dean kisses him.

Sam tugs Dean's collar harder, makes a noise, kisses him back. Dean holds him there, and Sam stays there.

At some point Dean lets go, and Sam is still there, and then Dean is the one who's shaking, but Sam grabs his wrists, breathes on Dean's mouth. "Yeah?"

Dean just kisses him again, clutching at the front of Sam's shirt, and Sam hiccups or gasps or laughs, it doesn't really matter.

-

"So I was thinking," Sam says, looking at the map on Crystal's dining room table. "We should go to the ocean next."

"Sure, anywhere."

"There's this town in Washington that's had some sea monster sightings, only recently. Could be a hoax, but -"

"Aw come on, Sam, you want to do another case? We just did two in a row. Can't we just go lie on the beach?" Dean's been walking around the adjacent living room, one eye on the TV, another out the window. He's got too much energy to stay here much longer, too many things bouncing around in his head. He's ready for them to get going. They'll find a case soon enough; for now Dean just needs to get out of this town.

"You want us to sit around on our asses?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Or I'll find me a mermaid." Dean laughs at Sam's scrunched-up face.

"No way," Sam says. "You are not leaving me for a mermaid."

"Don't be stupid," Dean says, and maybe punches Sam harder than he should've.

"Oh my god." Sam rubs his shoulder. "You are such a sap. Look at you."

"You're full of it."

Sam catches Dean's foot with his as Dean walks by, and he hops, second nature almost, then turns to look at Sam. He's kinda hadn't been. Not since they walked back and took showers, and slept till dinnertime. Dean got up before Sam and pounced on the leftover takeout, and that's how Sam found him, pacing with food in his mouth.

Sam's looking up at him with this smile that, despite all the smugness he packs in, Dean still knows is a little uncertain. It makes his heart wrench.

"Sammy." Dean says. And he kinda doesn't know what else to say. Isn't that enough? Why does Sam want him to _say_ stuff, damn it. He feels like he got it all out, in drunken phone calls years ago, in the last near-year of making a car-shaped home with just him and Sam. They know how to share silences now, don't they? Dean can't muster up the words for this thing that feels so much bigger.

Sam makes a face again, like he can see Dean's brain churning and giving up and he thinks it's a bunch of crap. He stands up and swings a hand close to Dean's head. Dean dodges. Sam bats at him again, softly, soft hands on the side of his head, his neck and shoulder, and then Dean's not so much fending Sam off, pushing back at him, as he is feeling his little brother up through a couple layers of clothes.

Sam ducks his head to kiss Dean, and Dean's actually a little surprised, but like he's surprised by all of this, now that it's up close and happening, not just a speck on the horizon, something that used to be so bright he couldn't look at it, now up close and warm.

"Sam," he says, and Sam shakes his head. "This is some kind of fucked up. Isn't it?"

"I don't care," Sam says. "Like you say, we're freaks, aren't we?" Still with that question in his eyes. And Dean really wants this, wants Sam with him, wants Sam to know.

Sam lets Dean push him up against the wall, mouth-open grinning as Dean nips at his jaw, then after a few seconds of that he flips them around, starts sucking on Dean's throat and pressing up against him. Dean is in muddled awe. He wouldn't admit that to Sam, though, so he groans "Fuck yeah," and holds onto Sam's belt, and feels Sam breathe hot and fast against his neck.

"Dean," Sam says, and the rasp in his voice stokes the heat in Dean's belly. Then, "Dean, hey," and Sam's leaning back. He can't very far, since Dean's still got his hand looped under Sam's belt, but he doesn't back away or anything.

"The hell?" Dean says.

"Let's get going."

Dean yanks him back in by the belt. "Fuck that."

But Sam's shaking his head, taking Dean's hands off him. Still, he's smiling, keeps smiling over his shoulder as he starts shoving stuff into his duffel by the couch. "Save it for a scenic viewpoint, dude, let's hit the road ."

"Are you for real?"

"I said save it, not forget it."

Dean grunts, impatient but happy enough with _that_ response. "Fine," he says. "How long to the ocean?"

"About four hours straight shot. But hey, there's a Winchester Bay further north. We kind of have to -"

"No way, bitch. I'm driving, I'm going straight to the coast, and I'm gonna stop at all the scenic fucking viewpoints I want."

Sam laughs at that, jostles Dean with his shoulder on his way out the door, and Dean grins after him.


End file.
